Section: US & Canada

Russia says that it is still open to developing economic cooperation with Western countries and welcomes foreign investment, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2015) Friday. He dismissed the notion that Russia had stopped cooperating with the West over the political unrest in Ukraine....

ST. PETERSBURG — As the crisis in Ukraine was spiraling into war a year ago, the Obama administration pressured U.S. business leaders not to attend Russia’s glitzy annual business summit. This year, they were back — but with Russia’s economy entering a deep funk, few of them were doing much business.Read full article >>...

OTTAWA – Five things to know about the deteriorating Canada-Russia relationship:Northern Exposure — Tensions over Canada and Russia’s Arctic territorial ambitions have been brewing since at least February 2009, when Canada scrambled F-18 fighter jets to intercept Russian bombers approaching Canadian airspace, then loudly publicized...

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Russia isn’t seeking dominance or superpower status, but wants its interests to be respected by the United States and its Western allies, President Vladimir Putin said Friday as he sought to assuage investors spooked by Russia’s recession and a showdown over Ukraine. While Putin repeated a litany of...

Waterloo (Belgium) (AFP) – Under the same leaden skies and the same damp Belgian fields, the Battle of Waterloo was fought again 200 years on Friday — this time with pyrotechnics and blaring classical music.Six thousand history enthusiasts from 52 countries in full costume acted out the attack by French emperor Napoleon’s forces...

The U.S. State Department said Friday that it’s difficult to achieve a political solution to the Ukraine crisis when there are still thousands of Russian forces fomenting unrest in the country. Department spokesman John Kirby, responding to comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin at a St. Petersburg business forum, said it would...

Kiev (AFP) – Cash-strapped Ukraine promised on Friday to make the next payment on a disputed Russian loan it had threatened to stop servicing due to Moscow’s rejection of more lenient terms.The decision should help ease some of the tensions building between the two neighbours throughout Ukraine’s 14-month separatist revolt that...

Thousands of NATO troops took part in a two-week exercise in Poland and the Baltic states, practicing sea landings, airlifts and assaults, the Associated Press reports. The series of massive maneuvers, each with its own code name, took place on NATO’s eastern flank and in the Baltic Sea, where 5,000 troops from 17 NATO and partner nations...